SMA February 2008 Newsletter

OFFERS That Sell!!!
Wednesday, March 19 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

What's the fastest way to improve response? Change the element that actually drives your response -- the offer. Too many times, the offer is an afterthought (or worse, there's no offer at all). In this information-packed session, you'll learn:

How to craft a Direct Sell offer versus a Lead Generation offer
How the specific words you use will affect response - either positively or negatively
How to design your offer(s) to complement the steps in your sales process
What you need to know to NEVER be surprised about the quality of your leads again
How to actively manage the Lead Quality/Quantity Tradeoff
How to banish the ho-hum "more information" non-offer
How to make every offer sound irresistible

You'll leave this session with a list of more than 100 compelling offers for your next test!
To register, go to www.sdpcc.org

IDEA OF THE MONTH
Optimized Press Releases Can Mean Fast, Effective Lead Generation

Have you considered using a search engine-optimized press release? They can be especially effective for generating response, when you use the press release to announce your new white paper, trial download, webinar, podcast, etc. It's becoming a highly effective way to drive fairly immediate traffic to your site.

MarketingSherpa recently reported on a white paper campaign that featured:

A press release, optimized with 6 niche keyword phrases, that was distributed through an online distribution service,
Very specific keyword phrases to achieve qualified leads, and increase the chances of getting a high search engine ranking for the white paper (for specific search terms where there wasn't a lot of competition in the search engine results).
Landing page (and several versions were tested) to receive clickthroughs from the link in the press release.

The results? The release appeared on 20 news sites within 3 hours, and the company had its first 3 prospects within 75 minutes. Two days after the release, the release had achieved 2 top-five rankings on Google and Yahoo! for the niche keywords.

The company's testing also revealed the best landing page used the same headline as the press release. (You can also generate good organic search engine placement for your offer by optimizing your landing page.)

EMAIL EFFECTIVENESS LAB

Email Frequency Tied to Topic

One e-retailer has come up with a good solution on their email newsletter sign-up form. They allow visitors to sign up for specific types of emails, like:

Great Deal of the Day Email
Weekly Coupons Email
New Products Email

And visitors can also select the specific products they are interested in learning about through email. In this case, visitors can see the benefit tied to the email frequency - if you want to know the special each day, then you'll agree to a daily email. If weekly is more reasonable, then you can select the weekly coupons email, etc.

Email Newsletters: Which One Has the Highest Readership?
When a visitor signs up to receive your email newsletter, which issue will they give the most attention? It's actually your "thank you for subscribing" email, usually set up as an automatic email message. So why not make this email - the one that is going to get the highest readership of all your email newsletters - say more than just "thank you"? Why not:

Make an actual OFFER in your welcome email - for your most popular white paper, webinar, podcast, or download?
Include links to your most popular web pages
Include a paragraph on your most popular product

Include ALT-Tags for All Images in Email

"Graphics off" is still the default for the majority of email programs. So be sure to write text to explain each image, and have your programmer use that text to create ALT-tags that will appear inside images within your email when a recipient has images turned off. A&E tried this, and got a 41% increase in clickthroughs.

Another solution? Try sending a text-only email, followed by an HTML message a few days later. The Durham Bulls minor league baseball team (minus Kevin Costner) sold 262% more tickets with this strategy, and also discovered that 89% of those sales came from their text-only message!

Email Design

Preview panes are affecting every facet of email effectiveness, including the best place for your special offers. MarketingSherpa's tests found that moving their special offers from the right column to the left column - where they may be more likely to appear in preview panes - has improved their clicks by 28%.

This monthly e-newsletter summarizes the latest Response Marketing findings as reported by MarketingSherpa, Direct magazine, DM News, Target Marketing, various white papers, and other resources.

Comments? Have you noticed any good or bad Copy examples lately?

Check out more copy reviews at blog.SMAresource.com

Email Karen at info@SMAresource.com.